I saw this video on Hilary White's Twitter and it left me with a sour stomach. When that passed I felt the deep urge to throw down my gauntlet, like a medieval knight. This is a priest and he's acting like a third rate performer in a run down comedy club. Novus Ordo: Another Liturgical Abuse Priest on altar strips off vestments down to a referee's uniform and then mocks Beniction by using a baby.

Seminarians, calling themselves The Dameans, set liturgical music to guitars in the 1970s. Photo credit: thecatholiccommentator.org What might be the repercussions of Pope Francis’ public letter to Cardinal Robert Sarah, the Vatican’s liturgy chief, correcting him for seeking to rein in the Pope’s new liturgical decentralization? To gain perspective on the significance and potential impact of the Pope’s letter to the cardinal, we spoke with Dr. Peter Kwasniewski, a prolific writer and international lecturer on the liturgy, as well as a cantor, conductor, and composer of sacred music. LifeSite: Dr. Kwasniewski, what in your view is the most significant...

Francis v. Sarah Responses and comments -- or not -- by a pope are rarely accidental. When four cardinals asked Pope Francis to clarify the pro-divorce language in Amoris Laetitia the questions have been ignored for so long that half of the cardinals have since died. The remaining two still look forward to an answer. Yet when Francis has a mission, anything (or anyone) standing in its way gets dealt with by the most humble, charitable and non-judgmental pope in the history of the Roman Catholic Church. The most recent example is Magnum Principium, his motu proprio to toss translations of the...

Hot off the presses and hitting a church near you comes the pamphlet, “Our Faith Teaches: Welcoming the Refugee and the Migrant.” The pamphlet begins the church’s two-year mass education effort to condition (especially United States) Catholics to support programs like “Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals” (DACA) and apparently accept “global migration” by any immigrant group -- no questions asked. The “Share the Journey” website first introduces us to immigrant “Ruth” -- a name obviously meant to invoke the Biblical Ruth who was widowed and then followed her mother-in-law into a strange land -- and famously gave the world, “Whither...

In a recent article on the state of liturgy in the French journal La Nef, excerpted in English at Sandro Magister’s indispensable blogsite, Cardinal Robert Sarah, the now-neutralized Prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, presents the usual “conservative” admissions of the liturgical disaster that has unfolded since the post-Vatican II “liturgical reform” was thrust upon the Church. The usual admissions are followed by the usual “conservative” refusal to admit that the “reform” was a catastrophic blunder that should be abandoned in favor of a return to liturgical tradition. Worse, Cardinal Sarah prescribes a...

Francis: "We can affirm with certainty and with magisterial authority that the liturgical reform is irreversible" Pope Francis gave an address on the liturgical reform of Pope Paul VI today, speaking to participants of the 68th Italian National Liturgical Week. In it, Francis declares: "After this magisterium, after this long journey, we can affirm with certainty and with magisterial authority that the liturgical reform is irreversible." Francis' remarks ironically read like a Quo Primum for the Novus Ordo. Pope St. Pius V's Quo Primum (1570), which has never been revoked or abolished by any pope, decreed that the Traditional Latin Mass, which the saintly...

50 years on, a fascinating glimpse of how liturgical reform became a juggernaut by Joseph Shaw posted Thursday, 25 May 2017 A Mass facing the people, with the tabernacle attached to the altar: Eucharisticum Mysterium, issued on May 25 1967, shows the conflict between innovation and traditionToday is the 50th anniversary of the Instruction Eucharisticum Mysterium, signed by both the Prefect of the soon-to-be abolished Sacred Congregation of Rites, and the President of the Concilium, the temporary institution in charge of the liturgical reform. It now represents a fascinating snapshot of a fast-moving action sequence.In 1967 the Novus Ordo Missae,...

Fr. Thomasz Jochemczyk, of the Diocese of Albenga-Imperia, Italy, in a lecture at the International Congress for the Reign of Christ the King, presented in dramatic fashion the spiritual/theological and psychological consequences of the priest saying Mass with his back to Our Lord in the Tabernacle. Fr. Jochemczyk asks: how would you feel if someone addressed you with their back to you? Is it not an insult? And what are we to make of such a stance - literally - when the priest address Our Lord, turned away from Him? Remember, Jesus Christ is God, He is our King. He...

So, while the "Reform of the Reform" is dead for the universal Church, some particular churches (and not only parishes) may be moving ahead with bringing some elements of Roman Tradition to the new, and made-up artificial rite of Paul VI. So it is with the Archbishop of Monterrey (Nuevo León state), in Mexico, Abp. Rogelio Cabrera López, who sent the following message to all his priests: In the prologue of Saint John is found the synthesis of the Apostolic Faith, centered in the Mystery of the Incarnation: Jesus is the Word, the One who IS for all Eternity, who...

More than half of all U.S. Catholics (52 percent) would cast a vote for Democrat Hillary Clinton if the election were held today, compared to just 32 percent for Republican Donald J. Trump... More than three in four (76 percent) non-white and Hispanic Catholics would pick Clinton, with 13 percent choosing Trump. Among white non-Hispanic Catholics, Clinton holds a much smaller lead, 44 percent to 41 percent.... Six in 10 (62 percent) white evangelicals say they would vote for Trump today, while 47 percent of white mainline Protestants pick Trump. That comes from a new survey by the Public Religion...

American Catholic voters lean strongly toward Hillary Clinton in this year's presidential contest, according to a new Pew Forum survey. The Pew poll found that Clinton held a 56-39% advantage over Donald Trump among Catholic voters. That 17% margin was markedly different from the results of a similar poll in the last presidential race, when then-Senator Barack Obama was virtually even with Mitt Romney among Catholic voters in June 2012. However, Clinton's margin among Catholic voters was entirely attributable to a huge (77-16%) advantage among Hispanic Catholics. Among white Catholics, Trump had a slight (50-46) edge. Among all voters surveyed,...

From the book: God or Nothing: Cardinal Robert Sarah, Nicolas Diat In 1958, therefore, you were at the seminary when John XXIII was elected pope? […] On the other hand, I stilled lacked the maturity needed to understand the scope of the council desired by that pope. I knew, however, that Archbishop Tchidimbo represented my country and that he traveled regularly to Rome for discussions with the bishops from the other countries of the world. Although he did not really speak to us about the content of debates, I nevertheless relate an event that impressed the Catholic faithful of Conakry....

Many folks have been expressing a great deal of excitement that Cardinal Sarah, Prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship, made an exhortation calling for the Novus Ordo to be offered Ad Orientem. I agree with Rorate Caeli in finding this excitement badly misplaced. That is to say, his words, while nice and comforting to conservative/traditional ears, perhaps, are meaningless in any real, effective sense. Nothing will change, as they did not change after Cardinal Arinze many times called for Latin in the Mass and Communion received on the tongue. The fundamental issue, as Rorate notes, is that modernists/progressives do...

Foreword by Michael J. Matt It is becoming apparent to this writer that many people, Catholics and non-Catholics alike, are waking to the harsh reality of what Pope Francis is all about. The next step is to help these same good people understand the harsh reality of what the entire Modernist revolution has been about ever since the days of St. Pius X, when popes were still vigorously battling this great ‘synthesis of all heresies’. The Modernist revolution ‘came out of the closet’, if you will, at the time of the Second Vatican Council, but nowhere was its agenda made...

Soon after the publication of the motu proprio Summorum Pontificum, three priests of the Diocese of Novara (Piedmont, Italy) tried to celebrate the Traditional Mass exclusively (we reported on these developments here and here). In an interview released a few days ago, Father Alberto Secci tells his story, and presents us with the wonderful account of his life after Summorum. Yes, there is a life for diocesan priests celebrating the Sacraments according to the ancient use exclusively. And it can be beautiful, and powerful, and glorious, despite the normal difficulties of life. "Can you imagine what would happen if all...

Radicati Editorial: "Thank God We Did Not Obey Those Forcing the New Mass Upon Us" The New Mass, Source of Pious Naturalism Editorial: Radicati nella fede, June 2016 Newsletter of the Catholic community of Vocogno, Diocese of Novara, Italy Thank God we did not obey. We are going to shock you, but some provocations are beneficial and useful. Thank God we did not obey those, who, in order to keep us within “ordinary pastoral care” (while allowing us reluctantly an occasional Traditional Mass) asked us not to be closed to the Council’s New Mass. Thank God we did not obey:...

A Path Back to Liturgical Sanity Whether they realize it or not, the Mass with which most Catholics are familiar, the one said in almost all Catholic Churches in the Western Hemisphere, is called the Novus Ordo, or more colloquially, the "new Mass." Many older Catholics may remember the Tridentine Mass, sometimes referred to as "the old Latin Mass," or the "Traditional Latin Mass (TLM)." More and more, however, young people are discovering the beauty of the Mass as it was known for hundreds of years before the wreckovation that occurred after Vatican II. While the Novus Ordo is a...

With all the hullabaloo on this topic, I have tried valiantly to avoid having a knee-jerk opinion on altar girls. Now, however, I have actually spent some time thinking about it. And I do have an opinion, based on my personal experience both as a Catholic mother and REGINA’s Editor. I raised a son and a daughter in the Catholic Church in Connecticut in the 1990’s and 2000’s. My daughter had zero interest in being an altar ‘server’ and I was somewhat dubious about then-popular claims that serving the altar would somehow prepare her to have a successful career. In...

"He will be out of the parish and will spend some time to reflect on this past event," the diocese of a Philippine church said. A priest in the Philippines is in trouble after a video showing him singing a Christmas song while riding a hoverboard during Mass has gone viral. A video of the incident posted on Facebook on Dec. 26 had more than 14 million views as of Tuesday. Several parishioners are seen cheering and clapping in the video as the priest rolls around the nave like a pro. But the Diocese of San Pablo, Laguna, condemned the...